The gangs of New York

Our opinion: Albany County schools get left out in a Senate stunt to dole out more state aid. Politics is one thing. Playing with children’s education is another.

Just listen to the state Senate Republicans defending their impossibly heavy-handed manner of distributing aid to school districts. Listen, that is, and ask yourself whether this is remotely acceptable politics — or if it’s really a protection racket for the GOP and the Senate majority it’s so determined to preserve.

Here’s the Senate Republican’s spokesman, Scott Reif, defending how $23.5 million in so-called “bullet aid” was handed out just prior to the Legislature’s adjournment last month: This money, he says, is intended to “smooth out inequities in the school aid formula.”

It’s been a while now since we were in school. But we’re not stupid.

The rather generous disbursement of aid to most — remember that part — of the Capital Region isn’t going to smooth out anything. To perpetuate the inequities in the political balance of a fractious and still rather dysfunctional institution is more like it, regardless of the utterly innocent casualties.

Schools and libraries in Niskayuna Republican Hugh Farley’s Senate district made out pretty well. So did those in districts represented by Saratoga Republican Roy McDonald, Poughkeepsie Republican Stephen Saland and Otsego County Republican James Seward.

But Bethlehem Democrat Neil Breslin?

Not a nickel for any of the school districts and libraries in Albany County, which he represents.

So take that, Mr. Breslin, an eight-term senator still well-positioned to win re-election this fall to a body where incumbents rarely lose.

Take that, Mr. Breslin, an outspoken critic of the cutthroat politics of both parties.

The Republicans so determined to make an example out of him, and only him — other Democrats, notably those from New York City, evaded political muggings — can privately rationalize their manipulation of the school distribution formula as simply the way things really work in the Legislature. After all, this $25.5 million maneuver came without a dissenting vote from either party.

The Republicans’ suggestion, meantime, that the Democrats behaved similarly when they were in power, and that the three Democratic Assembly members from Albany County can fix this, couldn’t be less constructive. An endorsement of political parties acting like street gangs is more like it.

The real scandal here is the way school aid has become less about education than political extortion. Shortchanging schools and libraries and the people they serve as a way of sending a message to an out-of-favor senator — or to voters — is way out of bounds. It should be, at least, even in New York.

Yes, some school aid is little more than pork with altruistic trappings. But sometimes — in places like the city of Albany — that money can help an urban district with serious fiscal troubles tide things over a bit. Listen to Albany school board president Dan Egan:

“It hurts our students, and I think it’s unjust,” he says. “If there’s money out there, it should be allocated in a way that does the most good for the most students.”

Let’s hear what glib retort anyone in the Senate might have to that. Let’s hear people who are supposed to be public-spirited adults, not petty thugs, explain themselves to the kids — who are the biggest losers in this.

4 Responses

What state aid amounts to is that we send our money to Albany and then we are told that we should reelect somebody because of the representative’s ability to get some of our money back. We would be better off not sending money elsewhere and spending it on exactly on what we want.

I think the reason Breslin can take the blame for it is that he didn’t get up and speak against this funding formula AT THE TIME it was passed and he has yet to make any public comments on this. It is also about relationships and Breslin failed to develop those with ANY Republicans. And developing such relationships IS POSSIBLE. I am not saying that what was done is right – the formula must be corrected to REALLY help those districts who struggle the most based on an unbiased rating system.